Sharp Corner (2025) Movie Review: Swerving Through The Torment of Inadequacy

You’d have a difficult task trying to find a film released in 2025 more overtly Canadian than “Sharp Corner.” If the opening credits citing producing parties like Telefilm Canada and Crave don’t make it immediately obvious (or the fact that it, like many Canadian films, is seeing its release about seven or eight months after its TIFF debut), then director Jason Buxton ensures that the first images we see after the fact do, as a car rolls down a road paved across a densely boreal patch of land, a relentlessly chipper song about sunshine or whatever blasting over the soundtrack.

True to form, the least Canadian thing about “Sharp Corner” is likely what proves to be most recognizable about it, and subsequently the main reason why many will likely queue in: the at-once friendly and quietly sinister mug of one Ben Foster. Indeed, Foster’s name has become one most recognized for its lack of recognition, as the consistent American character actor has remained a fixture of audience “Most Underrated Actors” lists for the better part of this millennium. Now, Buxton has found a suitable lead role for the actor, leaving him to dominate a small-scale thriller with all the nuanced oddity that you’re unlikely to find in a production steered further South.

In a way, this mostly comes down to Foster’s role this time around, inhabiting such a stereotypical Canadian kindness with the sort of blinding sincerity that makes it all so quietly terrifying. In “Sharp Corner,” Foster plays Josh, the father of a loving three-person family unit moving into their spacious new dream home. He and his wife Rachel (Cobie Smulders) are absolutely taken with the size and isolation the home provides, but things take a dark turn on the very first night of their move.

A car comes careening down the sharp turn at the edge of their corner house, sending the vehicle right onto their front lawn and killing the driver. The incident is, understandably, traumatic for all involved, particularly with the presence of the couple’s young son (William Kosovic)—but Josh is especially struck by the incident in an oddly personal way. This accident proves not to be the last, and with each passing moment, Josh’s obsession with the unsuspecting death trap a few feet away from his front door grows well beyond secondhand trauma or morbid fascination.

Sharp Corner (2025) — A still from “Sharp Corner” (2025)

For a change, the lush forestry of many a Canadian city actually plays itself, and for a change, Vancouver is NOT the city in question; “Sharp Corner,” in its focus on the mental isolation that comes with a physical quasi-remoteness, steers its energy towards the opposing East coast, choosing Halifax, Nova Scotia as both setting and filming locale. With all the opportunity to soak in the natural beauty of the landscape, though, Buxton remains fixated on what the suburban remoteness of this setting can do to the psyche of a man who sees himself as the protector of the house; the paramedics take 10 minutes to respond to any accident, and by then, it’s already too late.

How Josh thus reacts to this reality gives “Sharp Corner” its distinctly off-putting atmosphere, abetted entirely by Foster’s fragile presence; the actor’s muted vocal delivery is almost parodic in its invocation of commonplace assumptions of Canadian submissiveness, and Buxton utilizes his star’s softened borders to mask the more sinister pointed edges that lie beneath. It truly is the Ben Foster show (even at the expense of his co-stars, relegated largely to stock roles meant to supplement his own mental breakage), and the actor rises to the occasion without ever crossing over into outright caricature.

In a way, this may come as a disadvantage to the film overall, as Buxton’s tonal reach might well have benefited from a more outwardly comedic slant as opposed to the deathly seriousness with which “Sharp Corner” approaches its unique premise. Not that these sorts of road tragedies should be taken lightly, but Buxton’s tight concentration on his subject’s mindset veers somewhat too close to standard masculine midlife crisis mode, with one foot planted in the darkness of his psyche and one planted in the inanity with which he confronts it.

It is perhaps in this respect of jumbled tones and intimate subjectivity that “Sharp Corner” will remain the most Canadian film to be released this year, lying in the shadows of more refined but not-quite-as-bizarre thriller offerings from the Southern neighbors. Jason Buxton, having only directed one other film over a decade ago, can surely benefit from sanding some of those rough edges for a more streamlined vision. Then again, given the film’s title, it would be challenging to argue that these rough edges are exactly what gives the film its ambiance, turbulent as it may be.